Good afternoon. I have a Buy/Sell/Trade category on my site that I’d like to restrict posting in until a member “likes” the rules topic. I asked the AI Bot, and it did give me some instructions. However, it seems that it requires Discourse Automation that is only available on hosted plans.
Is there a way that I can do this on my self-hosted platform?
Hi, it is actually bundled with the community edition for free. You can enable it in the Plugins tab.
Nevermind. I figured out that I can add the Discord Automation plugin manually…
Hmm, perhaps with Discourse Policy and group permissions?
- add-users-to-group: accepts a single group as input; users who accept the policy will be automatically added into this group (when policy is manually revoked or if the policy version is updated, user(s) gets removed from group)
I figured it out (with the help of ask.discourse.org).
I had to enable badge sql and then create a badge that is assigned when someone likes the specific post. I then created a group that Discord Automation auto assigns based on a user having the badge. I have the “everyone” group only read access to category so they can only react. I gave the custom group full access.
Nice – thanks for sharing the details!
Now you get to mark your post as your solution. 
I’m going to do a little write up on exactly what I did when I get home, just in case someone else wants to know. Then I’ll mark that as the solution.
Just in case anyone else is interested in doing this, here is a short writeup of what I did:
./launcher enter app
rails c
SiteSetting.enable_badge_sql = true
SELECT DISTINCT ON (pa.user_id)
pa.user_id,
pa.post_id,
pa.created_at granted_at
FROM post_actions pa
JOIN posts p ON pa.post_id = p.id AND p.post_number = 1
WHERE pa.post_action_type_id = 2
AND p.topic_id = 117
AND (:backfill OR pa.post_id IN (:post_ids))
That’s it. You should now have a system that makes sure members have agreed to the rules of the category before they are able to post in the category.
My next exploration is to see if there is a way to hide all topics except the rules to everyone that isn’t in that group. But, this basic system is good enough for now.
An alternative solution was suggested in the topic for the private topics plugin. I am moving that here.
Thanks for this plugin! I was looking for a way to provide a basic ticketing system in our community.
I’m also thinking of using this in my Buy/Sell/Trade category. Right now I have it set where everyone can read topics, but only people in a specific group can reply and create. The current workflow is: Member acknowledges that they read the rules by liking the post. Once they like the post, they are granted a custom badge. Discourse Automate adds them to the group based on the badge.
This stops people that haven’t accepted the rules from posting in the category. However, they can still see/read all of the postings.
So, would it work if I remove everyone from the category and only have that custom group in the security tab? As long as I have posts from the Admin group always visible, would people not in the custom group still be able to see and like the rules? Then, once they like and are added to the group, everything opens for them?
That is not what this plugin was meant to do.
Your use case can be implemented without this plugin, using the Discourse Policy plugin instead, which has the ability to add users who accepted the policy to a group.
I looked at the Policy plugin before I started down the rabbit hole of the way I ended up assigning the group membership. The reason I don’t like the Policy for this is because it has to be applied to a group. I would have to apply it to something like trust_level_1 to make sure everyone that wants to be a part of B/S/T sees it. But, not everyone wants to participate in B/S/T. I don’t want to hound them with another thing to click (even though it is quick) if they aren’t interested in it.
People will join “BST applicants”, accept the policy and become member of “BST members”. Hairy but less hairy than triggering a complete Rube Goldberg machine by liking a post.
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Private Topics Plugin
This could work as well. I’ll investigate it. Thank you!! I am really new to Discourse, so I’m learning the ways.